Stratix' Success Secrets: A Preview

By Jim Roddy, president, Business Solutions magazine

In the near future, I’ll provide full details from my exclusive conversation with $150 million VAR Stratix conducted May 15 at the Ingram Micro Solutions Partner Invitational at the San Diego Marriott Marquis & Marina. In the meantime, here are some highlights from that talk with Gina Daniel-Lee, corporate director of strategic alliances at Stratix, and Kevin Paolino, the company’s new vice president of sales.

• Managed services and SaaS (Software as a Service) can be a boon for traditional hardware resellers today. By lowering barriers, those technology changes are enabling Stratix to sell into new markets through partnerships.
• Expand but stay focused; focus on what you do best and focus on the needs of your customers. Through the recession, Stratix stayed focused on mobility but looked for new markets, partnerships, and customers. Stratix also stayed true to the company’s goal of fully understanding a customer’s business practices before trying to sell a technology solution.
• The current average tenure of a Stratix employee is about 10 years, so the company can boast to prospective customers about their experienced staff. Daniel-Lee and Paolino described the approximately nine-hour Stratix hiring process as “rigorous” and said looking for character first has enabled Stratix to establish a productive corporate culture.

Bonus info: Ingram Micro gave BSM the first look at a new case study involving Stratix and Ingram. Here’s a summary of that release:

Think going to your local post office to mail a few letters or a package is a hassle? Try coordinating shipment of 13,000 Motorola battery packs to individually owned, geographically dispersed franchise stores on deadline and with no error. 

For Stratix Corp., an enterprise mobility integrator based in Norcross, Ga., this potentially time-consuming, logistical service challenge was simplified, thanks to a partnership with Ingram Micro’s Integration and Global Services teams. “Preparing and sending 13,000 Motorola battery packs to thousands of independently owned retail franchises was a big undertaking,” says Gina Daniel-Lee, corporate director of strategic alliances at Stratix. “There wasn’t a single mis-shipment. We were able to handle the delivery flawlessly.”

With this major deployment successfully completed, Stratix engaged with another large retail customer that required a very specific set of products over a period of time to meet its sales goals. Once again, Stratix called on Ingram Micro to set up a pipeline and keep a number of different products in the queue and readily available to ship at a moment’s notice to satisfy that customer’s demands. With its newfound service and support capabilities, Stratix is expanding its reach to serve a global customer base, while doubling-down on its national business model.

“We were able to diversify our portfolio, expand our net new business opportunities and enhance our service levels without eroding our existing business,” Daniel-Lee says. Stratix is not only expanding its business worldwide, but also attracting larger enterprise customers that rely on us to manage very large, complex mobile solutions, she says.